


in chambers dark, through mirrors dim

by stargirls



Series: love at first summons [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, M/M, OOpS!, the one that got. way out of hand, this is in fact the ouija board fic!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 07:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13266726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargirls/pseuds/stargirls
Summary: The paranormal has never really been Taako's jam. Astrology, magic, regenerative gemstones and tarot cards—they’re all very well in his wheelhouse, but he’s never had any particular inclination to believe in the existence of ghosts.Then again, according to the stunningly handsome man standing in their living room, it isn't a ghost they've summoned.





	in chambers dark, through mirrors dim

**Author's Note:**

> yet another fic from tumblr! this was a ridiculously fun prompt fill from @sp-ace-ie, who said:
> 
> _if youre up for AUs, a friend and i came up with this: college AU where Taako and his buds (Merle and Magnus) decide to play with a ouija board and accidentally summon Kravitz who Taako inevitably falls in love with_
> 
> so i had to indulge myself. enjoy!

It’s a dark and stormy night, which is precisely what Taako doesn’t need.

There are, he’s decided, one too many puddles in this parking lot worthy of Great Lake status. He’s forced to wade through one just getting to the curb, which soaks his wedges through and kicks up rainwater in his wake. Just as he makes it to the safety of the building’s overhang, lightning splits the sky, followed by a deafening crack of thunder. Taako yanks his hat over his head, which really doesn’t do anything because, like him, it’s thoroughly waterlogged, and leans on the buzzer.

A familiar voice crackles through the speakers. _“Burnsides!”_

“It’s fuckin’ negative three and pouring!” he shouts. “Lemme in!”

_“Geez, okay, comin’ right up!”_

The lock clicks with a strangled drone, and Taako ducks into the entryway. He makes it up the stairs mostly without incident, although right around floor three his heel slips and nearly catapults him straight back down to floor two, and it takes some decently fancy footwork to right himself again. Then it’s a short journey to the familiar door at the far end of floor five. _MERLE AND MAGNUS_ , proclaims a cobbled-together sign in large, messy script. Someone’s made a brave attempt to glue dried leaves to the sign, but they’ve since wilted and fallen off, sticking in the vent under the window. Taako shoots them a doubtful look as he raises his fist to knock.

Before he even makes contact, though, the door flies open and Magnus’s gap-toothed smile appears in front of him. “ ’Sup!” he says, beaming. “Oh, holy _shit_ , you look like a drowned cat!”

“Your fuckin’ leaves are a fire hazard,” is all Taako says, brushing past him into the apartment.

Magnus follows at Taako’s heels, grinning all the way. “Jesus, dude, can’t you get a ride from anybody? You didn’t walk the whole way here, did you?”

“Yeah, geez, Taako.” Merle gives him a lazy wave from the couch, picking M&Ms out of a suspicious-looking bag of trail mix. “I’d tell ya to put your feet up, but we’re kinda trying to keep it dry around here.”

“Fuck you, too,” Taako drawls, and flops onto the chaise, dropping his bag next to him. He does put his dripping wedges up on the coffee table, looking pointedly at Merle all the time, but he doesn’t rise to the bait—of course. Taako does pride himself on being exceptionally infuriating, but for reasons he can’t discern, Merle is the one nut he’s never been able to crack.

Magnus bounces onto the cushion next to him, and his weight is enough to dislodge Taako from his decently comfortable position. “So,” he says, before Taako has a chance to complain. “Didja bring it?”

“ ’Course I did. What d’you take me for?” He lifts the bag and hands it over to Magnus, who retrieves its contents eagerly. The box is just slightly wilted from its jaunt in the rain, but it looks as gaudy as ever, splashed with bright colors and cartoonish ghosts. _PARAPSYCHOLOGIST-CERTIFIED OUIJA BOARD!_ the front proclaims in bubbly, obnoxious letters. _YOUR DIRECT LINE TO THE ETHER FOR ALL MANNER OF SPOOKS, SPIRITS, AND THE LONG DECEASED!_

Merle gives it a once-over and snorts. “I’ve seen more authentic-looking Ring Pops.”

“Oh, yeah,” Taako shoots back. “I think it’s from the same company that did your _X_ -Treme Teen Bible.”

“Hey, don’t rag on the good book! Every pastor’s gotta have one!”

“You got certified _online_. And I’m pretty sure you were stoned outta your mind.”

“Doesn’t make it any less valid!”

Magnus shakes the box out onto the table. A slightly chipped, disappointingly plain ouija board slips out, followed by what looks like a beer-stained sheet of paper. “Hey,” he says, picking it up. “This thing comes with instructions!”

“Lemme see that.” Taako snatches it up and scans the surface. “ _Guidelines for summoning the undead._ Says it recommends some—some atmosphere? Fuckin’ _mood lighting_? Is this thing for real?”

Merle is already getting to his feet. “We got some candles around here somewhere,” he says. “Gimme a minute, I’ll set some up.”

Taako rolls his eyes. “Ghosts don’t give a shit about ambiance!” he says, but Merle’s waddled off into the hallway. He slumps back against the chaise and continues reading over the guidelines as Magnus picks up the ouija board, holding it up to his face.

He tips it from side to side and squints. “Uh, where’d you say you got this thing?”

“Thrift shop, my dude,” Taako drawls. “I was in need of some new—well, some old threads, I guess, and I picked up this thing for two bucks at the register. Cashier says they’ve had it in storage since the seventies or somethin’. Couldn’t believe my luck.”

Magnus rubs at a smudge towards the bottom. “I think somebody drew a dick on this thing.”

“If—if ghosts don’t give a shit about ambiance, they deffo don’t give a shit about dicks, I tell you that.” But Taako glances over anyway. It does look vaguely phallic, crudely scrawled in black ink and faded with time. He shrugs at it and goes back to looking at the guidelines.

Of course, he’s almost immediately interrupted by Merle dropping a box of candles on the floor. It lands with a _thud_ , scattering dust, and he coughs and waves it away from his face while gesturing proudly with his other hand. “Ta—ta-da! Knew we had ’em lying around here somewhere. Let’s get these babies lit.”

Magnus snorts.

Between the three of them setting candles out on every available surface, it doesn’t take very long to get the room appropriately _ambient_. Lighting them is a little harder, as three people sharing one lighter isn’t terribly productive, but Taako gets a few with a shower of Prestidigitation-induced sparks and they manage nonetheless. Finally, Magnus hits the lights, and they’re left standing in the living room with faint, eerie shadows flickering across the walls. Outside, the sky boils and darkens with every passing minute, and rain streaks the sliding doors in heavy, translucent rivulets.

It is, Taako has to admit, appropriately dramatic for a summoning.

They reconvene on the couch, where the ouija board and its planchette sit innocently on the coffee table. Despite the atmospheric lighting and even more atmospheric weather—ha—it looks no more intimidating than it had in its psychedelic casing. Taako finds himself seated directly in front of it. “Well, okay,” he says. “Anybody else wanna take this?”

He glances over at Magnus, who for all his outrageous brawn is looking decently nervous. “I’m, uh… I’m gonna pass,” he says. “I think you can take this one, Taako, right?”

Taako shrugs again. “Merle?”

“Eh…” He shoots a dubious look at the oujia board. “Don’t think I should. Not really in the mood to, uh… piss off any gods maintaining the balance of life ’n death, or whatnot. I still wanna make it to the afterlife when I kick it, y’know? You understand.”

“My—my man, you coulda just said you weren’t interested.” Taako cracks his knuckles and positions his hands over the planchette. “Alright. Here we go. You two got any questions to start?”

“Are there—” Magnus clears his throat. “Are there any spirits present? Anybody, uh… here?”

The paranormal has never really been Taako’s jam. Astrology, magic, regenerative gemstones and tarot cards—they’re all very well in his wheelhouse, but he’s never had any particular inclination to believe in the existence of ghosts. It’s why he’d agreed so readily to Magnus’s suggestion of this as a Saturday night pastime. Besides, he’d had nothing better to do, not when his sister was off cavorting with her boyfriend and doing God knew what else. Ouija boards were supposed to be good for a laugh, and Taako had figured he’d get no better laugh than trying it out with the doofuses he called friends. As Saturday nights went, he’d thought, it wasn’t a bad idea for a little lighthearted fun.

So he has no reason to be spooked when the candle nearest to them flickers and nearly dies. What _is_ strange, he will concede, is the way something like a magnet tugs gently at the planchette. Not forcing it, or pulling at it, but guiding it like a gentle hand over his.  Taako lets his wrist slacken, and the planchette glides across the board. It lands solidly on a word engraved in over-exaggeratedly old-fashioned script, riddled with serifs and calligraphic swoops.

 _YES_.

Magnus sucks in a breath. “I changed my mind. I don’t think I wanna do this anymore.”

“Hey,” says Merle, through a terse chuckle. “That was a good one. Real good goof. You really got us goin’ there for a second, huh? Wow. Nice. Don’t you worry, Magnus, he’s just—he’s just jerkin’ our chain. Right, Taako?”

“Ideomotor effect, my man,” Taako murmurs, although he keeps his hands over the planchette. “Sometimes the mind fucks with us, y’know? Doesn’t mean anything.”

“Are you—are you telling me it did that on its own?” Magnus’s voice pitches up a good two octaves, but Taako isn’t paying attention.

“So,” he says. “How’s, uh… how’s it goin’?”

For a moment, they’re all sitting and staring intently at the board, bathed in candlelight, listening to the roar of the storm outside. Then that same, soft pressure returns over Taako’s hand, pushing the planchette towards the arrangement of letters. He exhales and lets it move.

_F… I… N… E… T… Y._

“ _Finety_?” Merle frowns.

“No, you— _Fine, thank you_. That’s—that’s what, what fuckin’ _T-Y_ means.” Taako can’t choke back his stammer, which he knows means he’s more shaken up than he intends to let on. He won’t deny that this is extremely strange, but it’s all science—unconscious movements influenced by the power of suggestion. Very, very strange science, granted, but science nonetheless.

Magnus, on the other hand, looks rattled enough for the two of them, and Taako is pretty sure science is the last thing on his mind. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, okay, okay, okay. This is—I mean, this is legit, right? This is actually happening? Because I think we just contacted a ghost—”

The planchette _jerks_. They fall silent as it moves hastily across the board, and Taako tracks its movements, spelling the word out in his mind.

_E… M… I… S… S… A… R… Y._

“Emissary,” he breathes.

Merle sighs. “Well, what the hell does that mean?”

“It’s like a representative,” says Magnus. “Right? Is that—is that what this thing is? Representative of _what_?”

With a far lighter touch, the planchette shudders under Taako’s hand. Wordlessly, he lets it move, crossing the board once again.

_D… E… A…_

“ _Please_ don’t go to _T-H_ ,” Magnus whispers. “Oh, God, please, don’t go to _T-H_.”

_… T… H._

“Mother _fucker_.”

“Hey, Taako?” says Merle. “Now’s the bit where you show us the hidden camera, and go, ‘Haha, gotcha! You shoulda seen your faces!’ And then we all have a good laugh about it, and put the video on YouTube, and become overnight Internet sensations. Eh? Eh?”

Somewhere between the _D_ and the _H_ , Magnus had grabbed a pillow that he is now clutching in a chokehold (or whatever the chokehold equivalent is to something that doesn’t have a throat). “Holy fuck,” he mumbles into it. “So we’ve got the fuckin’—the fucking _Grim Reaper_ living in our apartment, right? Do I—do I have that clear?”

Taako doesn’t bother responding to either of them.

Instead, he takes his hands off the planchette—“Taako, what are you _doing_ , don’t make it _angry_!”—and stands up, propping his hands on his hips. “Hey, thug!” he says into empty air. “I know you can hear me!”

“ _Taako_ ,” hisses Magnus. “You’re gonna piss it off!”

“Yeah, I dunno about this, buddy—”

Taako steps confidently up onto the coffee table, pushing aside the ouija board with one wedge. A candle on the mantle wavers, and he fixes it with a steely glare. “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you! What’re you doing hangin’ around in my friends’ apartment, huh? You wanna lurk in the ether or whatever the fuck, you gotta at least cough up some rent, amirite?”

The sofa squeaks and lurches behind him as Magnus fidgets uneasily, but for the moment, there’s no response. Just Taako, poised on the coffee table in his still-damp heels, illuminated by the glow of at least thirty candles and the occasional flash of lightning.

“Taako,” Magnus pleads. “ _Don’t_. Let’s just—let’s just put it away!”

The air crackles with ozone. Taako’s ears twitch.

And with a loud, sudden crash, the sliding door bangs open and bounces off its frame. Magnus lets out an alarmed yell and scrambles backwards, nearly crushing Merle under his burly frame, but Taako holds his ground as the wind extinguishes every candle in the vicinity and rain lashes his face.

After a few seconds of this, he does have to close his eyes against the onslaught, and he imagines that makes for a nice image—standing boldly atop the table, striking his best power stance, his eyes screwed tightly shut. Eventually the whirlwind subsides, and he’s able to open them again, rocking slightly backwards to regain his bearings.

And there’s a man in their living room.

Either Magnus or Merle behind him lets out a strangled gasp, but Taako hardly hears it. The man’s silhouette is feathered and hazy against the dimly lit outline of the window, and when he blinks and shakes his head, looking nearly as put off as they are, Taako catches a glimpse of an electric, vivid glow. They’re his eyes, he realizes. A pair of unnaturally red irises that flare wide when he sees the sliding door.

“Oh, for the love of—” He shuffles hastily to the door and pushes it closed, then turns around to face the three of them. The room is darker than ever, now, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “I’m so sorry, really, that’s just being overdramatic.”

This spirit—emissary, whatever—has a voice Taako can only describe as heavily affected Cockney. As a former theater kid, he’s no stranger to fake accents. Hell, he can pull off a pretty mean West Virginian drawl, as well as some other spot-on impressions. But this accent is _fake_. Faker than Merle’s push-up record. (He claims thirty-nine under a Zone of Truth, but they both know he’s pulling some bullshit they haven’t been able to figure out.)

And then the inexplicably Cockney reaper looks up and says, “We could use a bit ’a light in here, couldn’t we?” and the overhead light comes to life.

Taako’s always had an eye for detail. It’s that eye that draws him first to the man’s cufflinks, glittering at the wrists of his impressively tailored jacket; the angle of his waist and how it tapers elegantly inward. His stare climbs steadily higher, noting the heavy-looking mantle of black feathers hanging off his shoulders and a jawline that looked like it could have been sculpted from marble. It lingers briefly over a pair of arching cheekbones, then moves to the dreadlocks pulled neatly behind his head, to the soft crease of his brow. They lock eyes, and Taako realizes he’s biting his lip.

Scratch that. Death is in their living room, and he’s _gorgeous_.

“You—you—” Magnus’s voice goes up another octave, which Taako would count as impressive if he wasn’t so distracted by the view in front of him. “You—you—?”

“I…?” He arches a perfect eyebrow and tries to lean around Taako to look at Magnus, but his gaze freezes right around Taako’s knee and darts upward from the hem of his skirt. From where Taako is standing, he’s barely a head taller than this man, which really isn’t saying much for his height, but that still means the man is looking up at him and that’s all he cares about.

“You,” he says, and his Adam’s apple bobs uncertainly in his throat. He can’t possibly be flustered, can he? That’s not what this is. “You’re the one I was talking to.”

“Yeah,” says Taako, crossing his arms and making a show of craning his neck. “ _And_?”

“And—and that was rather bold of you, don’t you think? Challenging a presence from the astral plane to—”

Taako breaks. He wasn’t exactly trying to hold it together, but still. “Okay, fella,” he interrupts, choking back a snicker. “Before we go on with the supernatural negotiations and—and whatnot, you gotta—you gotta drop the accent. Holy shit. They not got acting lessons in the astral plane? I mean, what the _fuck_ is that?”

He splutters, and, well, even _that’s_ beautiful. “I—I’ll have you know this is a mechanism of the occupation!”

“Which is doing a shitty _jolly-old-Fantasy-England_ voice? Shit, I really hope you haven’t crashed any other ouija parties with this accent of yours, because I dunno if that’s the sorta thing you can live down!”

The man flushes several shades darker than he already is, and that’s when Merle speaks up. “Speaking of the occupation,” he says. “What the _hell_ are you, and what are you doing in our apartment?”

“More—more to the point,” says Taako, before the man can respond, “we’re gonna need a handle, kemosabe.” He taps his wedge impatiently on the table’s surface. “I’m Taako, this is Merle, that big dipshit hiding behind the pillow is Magnus, we thought it’d be fun to fuck around with the paranormal and here we are. Your turn.”

This time, it only takes a moment or so for him to get his bearings, which is an impressive feat on its own but particularly when he’s facing down with Taako himself. “My name’s Kravitz,” he says, and like the flip of a switch, it’s in a milder, far more normal-sounding voice. Light, soft, distinctly Faerunian. “For now, let’s just say I… block summons like yours. Ones that reach out to restless souls. Is that a ouija board, by the way?” He shoots a pointed look at the slab of wood at Taako’s feet.

“Yeah,” Taako drawls. “You got a problem?”

“Actually,” says Kravitz, straightening up as his voice sharpens with displeasure, “I do. Do you three know how many ouija boards have been in use across Faerun over the last—oh, one hundred years? One. _One_. Normal people try to summon ghosts with magic circles and things our wards protect against, but you—you had to go the old-fashioned route, didn’t you? And I had to put my foot in the door, so to speak, and then limbo is a terribly difficult thing to get out of, and—”

“Rough day at work, huh?”

“Indubitably.” He pinches the bridge of his nose—the perfect, shapely bridge of his nose. Taako’s getting distracted, and he hasn’t even looked behind him to check on Magnus. “So I’ll need to, uh, portal myself out of here using your plane of existence, if that’s alright. And I’ll need that ouija board. I have to say, I’m… I’m not really asking.”

For the first time in a noticeable while, Magnus shifts from behind the pillow. He reaches out with his foot and pushes the board towards Kravitz, planchette and all. “Take it!”

Kravitz reaches out, but once again, like he’s been caught in some invisible honey trap, his hand freezes right around Taako’s ankle. Taako licks his lips and nudges the board a few inches further, well within Kravitz’s grasp. “Whatcha waitin’ for?”

“N—Nothing.” He visibly swallows, confident persona completely dropped, and Taako can’t contain his smirk. This is rich—a few steps from being unbelievable, but mostly just rich. He knows he’s attractive, of course, but this is some Emissary of Death, or however the board had put it, looking slightly more intimidated than Death has any right to be. And all because he’s in the proximity of a pretty—well, a _breathtaking_ guy, if he’s being fair to himself.

Well. He’d been voted most likely to seduce an eldritch entity back in high school; this is close enough, isn’t it?

“So,” he lilts, crossing one ankle over the other as Kravitz gathers up the ouija board in his arms. “You, uh… you come here often?”

A muffled chuckle drifts from Merle’s general direction, and Taako very subtly links his hands behind his back, then flips him off with practiced fluidity. Kravitz stares. “To the—” He drops his gaze, seems to realize the only thing of note at that level is Taako’s legs, and _very_ quickly looks up again. “To the material plane?”

Taako shrugs. “Sure, sure.”

“I mean—only when people like you try to disrupt someone’s eternal rest, if you get what I’m saying? If you’re picking up what I’m putting down?”

“Sure, sure, sure—listen,” says Taako, and leans in, just enough to prompt Kravitz to take an unconscious step back. “ _Real_ nice to meet you, super nice, can’t emphasize that enough. My friends here aren’t gonna fuck around with any more ouija boards—isn’t that right, boys?” he adds, and shoots the best possible glare he can muster at Magnus and Merle. The latter, of course, doesn’t look intimidated, but he nods anyway. The former doesn’t look like he needs any more convincing.

“Wouldja look at that!” He turns back to Kravitz with a brilliant grin. “Looks like we’re all set here. I’ll even seal it with a pinky swear, if you want.”

Kravitz looks approximately six city blocks from certain, but he holds up a pinky, scrutinizing Taako with those ridiculous eyes. “Pinky swear.”

Taako links his pinky with Kravitz’s. If he lets his thumb graze the underside of Kravitz’s wrist while he’s at it—and _boy howdy_ , is that a clammy one—that’s no one’s business but his own, is it?

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he murmurs. “Wink.”

With a barely-perceptible sigh, Kravitz steps back with the board in hand. “Well,” he says. “It’s been fun, I guess? Let’s maybe not do this again. Nice to meet you, Merle, Magnus… uh, Taako.”

He holds his hand out at his side, and the air congeals around it, blackening and thickening to form the largest, most cliché scythe Taako’s ever seen. Magnus makes another strangled noise from where he’s still frozen on the couch, but Kravitz just twirls it in his palm, fluid and easy. The space bends around it, stretching, accommodating for its length. He tests its grip, and then, just like that—exactly like he’d said—he rips a tear in the fabric of reality.

It’s dark. Not completely black, Taako notices; the inside ripples with an opalescent shade that plays with the eye the longer he looks at it. Kravitz hefts the board under his arm, gives them an awkward two-fingered wave, then steps through. It seals up behind him like someone zipping up a sweatshirt.

The silence hanging over them lasts far longer than a couple of seconds. Taako steps down from the coffee table and sits against it, searching for something to say in the carpet fibers below. For once, he’s not quite sure what that would be.

Luckily, Magnus breaks the silence for all of them.

“So,” he says. “Let’s never talk about that again.”

“Seconded,” says Merle. “Taako?”

But Taako’s already going for his bag. He swings it over his shoulder and marches for the door, and Magnus scrambles to get up from across the room, starting after him. “Ta—Taako—where the hell are you going?”

“Thrift shop.”

“ _Why_? You—you saw what just happened, right? You experienced all of that?”

“Sure,” he says, turning on his heel. “That’s exactly why I’m heading out.”

Merle drops his face into his hands with an overly dramatic groan. “ _Tell_ me you’re not going to get another Luigi board.”

“It’s a—it’s a ouija board—”

“You know it,” Taako sings.

Magnus’s face drops. “You—you _literally_ just promised _fucking Death himself_ you wouldn’t fuck around with them anymore!”

Taako tilts his head to the side. “Did I? Because I seem to remember promising him that _you_ wouldn’t fuck around with them. Never said anything about me, my man. ’S far as I’m concerned, I’m home free.”

Tentatively, Merle raises his head. “Why would you want to—?”

“Merle,” Magnus drones. “Don’t. Ask.”

“See, he’s got it.” With a squeal against the kitchen tile, Taako pirouettes and tosses a wave over his shoulder. “That was nice. Cool. Whatever. I’ll see you boys tomorrow, don’t do anything fuckin’ stupid, sleep tight!”

“You’re one to talk!” comes the half-shouted retort, but he’s already halfway out the door.

It’s a dark and stormy night, and Taako has some summoning to do.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @lichlesbian and on twitter @stellarlesbian!


End file.
